Gaming News - Page 421

Halo Infinite may be getting a battle royale mode after all, and it could be somehow linked to the game's campaign mode.

According to new reports from Battlefield informant Tom Henderson, Halo Infinite's new BR mode is connected to the campaign story arc. Exact information is sparse, but sources haven't clarified to Henderson whether or not the battle royale mode has been scrapped. This hybrid approach follows games like Apex Legends and the new Battlefield 2042 that will tell a story with their respective online live services.

Dataminers found sound clips for battle royale in the Halo Infinite preview source code, despite 343i saying in 2019 and later in 2020 that the game wouldn't have a BR mode.

It looks like Valve's new Steam Deck might actually support Microsoft's next-generation operating system, with Windows 11 support teased for the Steam Deck.

One of the biggest hurdles of Windows 11 running on Valve's new Steam Deck is going to be TPM, or the Trusted Platform Module. You can read more on that here, but the news here is that the hardware inside: an AMD Van Gogh APU + RDNA 2 GPU -- can handle TPM, and thus Windows 11 on Steam Deck.

Greg Coomer, Valve Steam Deck designer explains: "There's work looking at TPM just now. We've focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven't really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that".

I still remember pumping countless hours into Duke Nukem 3D back in the 1990s but man, what a mess Duke Nukem Forever turned into... but did you ever hear about Duke Nukem Begins?

Rewinding the clock back to 2008, director Gregor Punchatz was working for Janimation in Dallas, Texas when they were tasked by Gearbox Software to make a tease for Duke Nukem Begins. Duke Nukem Begins would've acted as a back story for Duke, which looks pretty damn cool.

Gregor Punchatz explained: "In 2008, when I was working for the good folks at Janimation in Dallas Tx, we were hired by Gearbox to create a vertical slice (an animated version of what the game will look like) for the game "Duke Nukem Begins", a Duke origin story".

No Man's Sky is now five years old and Hello Games is still planning more free updates.

No Man's Sky has changed a lot in the last five years. This evolution is one of the games industry's most notorious comeback stories. At launch in 2016, No Man's Sky was underwhelming and kicked off lots of controversy for Hello Games due to missing features and unsupported claims. The team has redeemed themselves with a multitude of free content that's radically transformed the game.

After 16 content updates, No Man's Sky now has everything: multiplayer, base-building, mechs, exotic creatures that you can ride, huge freighters, and even fully-fledged VR on PS4 and PC. Even after five years of content, the team is still planning new ways to build out their sci-fantasy adventure. The next update is Frontiers, which is dropping sometime in 2021. Hello Games says they still have a lot of ideas they want to try in No Man's Sky:

Today Microsoft outlined its plans for a digital stream during Gamescom on August 24, confirming big updates from some of 2021's most anticipated games.

The Xbox Gamescom showcase will kick off with a pre-show on August 24 at 1PM EST, followed by the premiere show at the Opening Night Live celebration on August 25 at 1PM EST. Like E3 2021, the Xbox Gamescom event will be a 100% digital stream focused on the "latest updates and gameplay for some of the biggest games coming soon to Xbox." Bethesda is also hosting a MainStream event on Twitch starting August 26.

For Xbox, it doesn't get any bigger than Halo Infinite. Xbox's Phil Spencer says Infinite's release date hasn't been revealed because it depends on other games. The holiday 2021 period is stacked with huge FPS games like Battlefield 2042 in October, Call of Duty Vanguard (which has yet to be revealed) likely in November, and Halo Infinite, which should also release in November to help celebrate 20 years of the Halo franchise.

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice gets a free next-gen patch that pushes the Xbox Series S and X consoles to their limits.

Ninja Theory just released a hugely ambitious new patch for Hellblade that supercharges performance and visuals. The game now has three modes, including a 4K 30FPS mode with ray DirectX 12 raytracing turned on and even an 120FPS option.

The modes use a combination of dynamic resolution scaling in order to achieve 60FPS and 120FPS gameplay, as well as 4K 30FPS RT. The optimizations add in higher texture resolution, increased light particle quality and environmental draw distances, and overall boosted levels of detail (LOD).

PlayStation Germany apparently confirms Grand Theft Auto V's next-gen version will hit 4K 60FPS on PlayStation 5.

A new PS Blog post says GTA V can run at 4K 60FPS on PS5. "You have never seen the criminal metropolis Los Santos so beautiful when the skyline shines thanks to a bold graphic update in crisp 4K resolution and you make the city extremely smooth and unsafe thanks to a smooth 60 FPS," the blog post reads.

Officially, Rockstar hasn't said much about GTA V's optimizations. The studio hasn't given out performance targets or confirmed other details like ray tracing, etc. The exact wording has just mentioned a "range of technical improvements, visual upgrades and performance enhancements," and both Take-Two and Rockstar promise GTA V's next-gen version will "take full advantage" of PS5 hardware.

EA has earned over $28 billion from digital revenues in the last 10 years as online earnings eclipse physical sales.

EA's digital empire has grown tremendously in the last 10 years with the expansion of live services and less reliance on physical game sales. Digital revenues, which include live services, subscriptions, and game sales made from online distribution channels, have grown 427% over the ten-year period: EA's FY11 digital revenues were $833 million and made up 22% of yearly net revenues, and by FY21, digital sat at a whopping $4.394 billion and made up 78% of earnings.

This represents a digital net revenues CAGR of 16%. EA's Ultimate Team model is a significant driver of yearly digital revenues, and has made the company over $7.9 billion in the last 8-year period from FY14 to FY21.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are making a new South Park video game as part of a new huge $900 million deal with ViacomCBS.

Viacom CBS just signed a $900 million deal for 14 new South Park direct-to-streaming films and multiple new seasons. The show has been secured for up to season 30 on Viacom's Paramount+ subscription service, and a new video game is currently in the works as well.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker tell Bloomberg that a new South Park game is part of this agreement. Not much is known about the game other than it's a 3D-based experience and will be developed by the duo's internal studio.

Saber Interactive has delayed the new Evil Dead game until February 2022, but they're adding new features to make it worth the wait.

The new Evil Dead video game looks pretty ambitious. It's a lot like the Friday the 13th multiplayer game except with greater emphasis on PVE survival, and features characters, demons and locales from the entire Evil Dead franchise--as well as the Starz TV show. Add in the development team and online infrastructure of World War Z and the new Evil Dead game is ready for online chaos.

There's just one issue: The game has been delayed a bit to ensure higher quality. Evil Dead is also getting a groovy singleplayer mode so you can still actually play if your friends aren't online.